


Mon Soldat

by EternalFangirl



Series: Henry Plantagenet is Mine Series [6]
Category: Henry V - Shakespeare, Henry VI - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works, The Hollow Crown (2012)
Genre: Basically Henry V teaching his son, Bonus in the end, Cute toddler Henry VI, Fluff, Gen, as it should have been
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 11:51:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8284825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EternalFangirl/pseuds/EternalFangirl
Summary: When Henry VI is being naughty, Harry has to teach his toddler an important lesson.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I remember telling everyone I would write another in this series and then just disappearing. Whoops, sorry! Fell into another fandom. The new season of Hollow Crown helped bring some of the Henry V feels back. Henry VI exasperated me, and all I wanted was for someone to teach him how Harry saw war. Then I remembered I had an alternate course of history on my Tumblr, et voila! Here we are. The name of this chapter means “my soldier”.
> 
> This was going to be a little dark, with Harry having to go to war or something, but dang I rotted my teeth on how fucking cute it got.

The prince’s third birthday was in four days, and there wasn’t a soul in the castle that wasn’t working diligently for the big day.

 

For his special day, the prince had demanded a few things. He wanted, in no particular order, a horse like his father’s, comfortable shoes like his mother’s, an audience with King Arthur, the second coming of Jesus, and a new ball.

 

It was an impressive list, and he was going to get them all. There were murmurs about the blasphemy of dressing up as Jesus, but no one actually had the gall to say so to the King, and so Jesus and King Arthur were both getting clothes and impressive armour made, while the finest carpenters in all the land left construction projects to make a rocking horse for the prince.

 

The prince himself, on the other hand, was very miffed that he wasn’t allowed to play in the gardens. They were right there, next to the terrace where he was confined.

“Out, Papa!”

 

“We will,” said Harry patiently, more than happy to have some time to hear his child’s impressive vocabulary. “Soon, Henry. We will go out and have fun and play, but right now the gardeners are busy making everything pretty for your birthday celebrations.”

 

Harry’s patient words were too big for Henry to understand, and he promptly began to cry, already knowing how his father abhorred his tears. “Jouons à l'extérieur, Papa. S’il vous plaît.”

 

Katherine stiffened and surreptitiously glanced around to check they were alone. The court did not want the prince taught in the French ways. Luckily for her, the king didn’t give a fuck. “The horse will only come if the gardens are clean,” she said with practiced ease. “He needs to make a grand entrance.”

 

The prince thought about it, his little face twisted in concentration. “Clean,” he said. “Clean! Henwy keep cwean!”

 

The earnest insistence on cleanliness made both his parents laugh out loud. There were many things the apple of their eye was, but clean was certainly not one of them. The gardens would end up looking like a war zone if he was let out of sight.

 

There was a beat while both laughing parents looked at each other across the table they were sitting at, silently debating who was going to brave their child’s ire by refusing him.

 

“How about we climb instead?” said Harry, in a blatant demonstration of how much he loved his wife. He would handle this.

 

Henry’s eyes widened, his comical expression making his mother laugh again. He scooted forward from his comfortable perch on the chair, disbelieving of his luck. When Papa didn’t stop him, he started the arduous and difficult adventure of climbing on top of his father. Seating himself across Papa’s broad shoulders was his lofty goal. Papa helped him a little, more to save himself from a humiliating black eye than to expedite his journey, but Henry still felt a wild sense of accomplishment when he was in place, chubby hands holding on to his father’s auburn curls.

 

“Why, my Lord,” exclaimed Catherine dutifully. “You seem to have grown so much all of a sudden!”

 

When the prince giggled, all was right with the world.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of course the tranquility of the day couldn’t last.

 

Harry heard the commotion during the silence of his afternoon council. He ignored it, focusing on work. If it was something important, someone would come alert him. It was more than possible that the cause of the screams was Henry. He must have been out catching frogs again. They had a tendency of ending up in ladies’ skirts.

 

It was only a few minutes later, when the council was dismissed, that Harry saw what had happened. Henry, in his infinite childish wisdom, had grabbed a spade from the gardener’s tool and spent all afternoon digging little holes in the grass. There were easily half a dozen of them, and his little boy was covered in mud, spade gleefully clutched to his chest as his nursemaid dragged him away.

 

“Mary, wait,” said Harry. “I would like to speak to the prince.”

 

The girl stopped as though she had walked into an invisible wall, her courtesy nervous and shaky, and Henry suddenly looked less proud of his accomplishments.

 

“Your Grace,” said the girl, probably wondering if she were to blame for this fiasco. Luckily, Harry knew his son’s sneaky ways well enough.

 

“You have done well, Mary,” he said with a gentle smile. “We thank you. You may leave.” Once the girl had fled, he simply told Henry to follow him and walked to one of the many holes now littering the royal gardens.

 

“Papa?”

 

Harry didn’t turn. Let the boy see what he did was wrong. “The royal gardeners have to make these gardens immaculate before your birthday, Henry. That is their task. What you did has created problems that they now have to correct.” He turned around now, aware of how he towered over his son. “You made their work difficult. Just to have some fun. Now they will have to work more, they won’t be able to go inside to eat, or talk to their children, or have any fun.”

 

Henry, unaware of how his father was exaggerating, looked horrified at being confronted with the consequences of his actions. “Sowwy, Papa,” he said, lower lip quivering.

 

Harry ignored the resulting twist in his heart. “Sorry is not good enough, love,” he said, finally kneeling to be closer to his child. “Sorry will not fix the problem you created. Instead, you will refill all these holes yourself, and help the gardeners replant the grass. You will help till the work is finished, or they are done for the day.” Harry paused, expecting the boy to argue.

 

“Yes, sir,” said the boy, humbled. Harry felt a surge of pride in his child.

 

“There will be times when you will go to war, Henry,” he said. “It will destroy a lot of things in our beloved England. But it is your duty to fix those too. It is your duty to care for your people. These gardeners serve you too. They are yours to look after.”

 

“War?” Henry’s whole face scrunched again as he thought. “But Papa, war is over. Papa win.”

 

“Yes, we won,” said Harry, getting off his knees to sit cross-legged on the grass. He pulled an unresisting Henry into his lap. “But when a country is powerful, enemies are everywhere. There will be other wars, other times you have to stand and fight for your country.”

 

“War is bad,” said Henry with the conviction of a child. “God created us to love.”

 

Harry thought about the sentiment for a long moment, wondering what to tell his pure child. “God created man to love, true,” he said finally. “But God created a king to protect. What happens if the French rebuild their army and decide they want to free their land from me?”

 

“You are the king of Fwance,” said Henry, suddenly agitated.

 

“Yes, mon garçon,” said Harry with a smile. “But they still want to take what is ours. What do we do then?”

 

“Give it to them?”

 

“That would be a very bad decision, son,” said Harry seriously, wondering suddenly how they had moved from gardening to politics. Was it too soon to be teaching him of war? “Thousands of men have died at war to help us win those lands. Would you let all that bravery and sacrifice go to waste? What would you tell the widows and orphans.”

 

Henry thought furiously, one chubby hand clutching his father’s doublet. “We pray?”

 

“What if we are the answer to those prayers? What if you ask God for a solution to the problem and you yourself are the solution, supposed to act?”

 

Henry was starting to get restless. “We fight, then.”

 

“Yes,” said Harry, beaming. “We fight. When there is no other way to protect what is ours, we fight.”

 

“I would need a horse to ride into battle,” lisped the prince, his demand still pompous.

Catherine smiled as she gazed at her husband and son out the window of her bedchambers. She was expected back in the formal rooms soon, but she couldn’t help watch her husband teach their willful son. They sat there, heads together, breeches filthy, talking and laughing in a garden full of potholes.

 

Catherine looked down at her still-flat abdomen. “Nous espérons que tu ne ne trouve pas des problemes aussi joyeusement, ma chere,” she said.

**Author's Note:**

> 'Mon enfant’ means my child. Lalala16 helped me with the other lines, which means she is an awesome reader of my stuff! Henry VI insisted “Let’s play outside” in the beginning, and Katherine said “Let us hope you don’t find trouble this gleefully, my sweet” in the end.


End file.
